BATTLE ERUPTS OVER MARINE CORPS TRAINING DOC THAT CITES ‘LACK OR LOSS OF SPIRITUAL FAITH’ AS POTENTIAL SUICIDE RISK FACTOR
Might not be a popular concept, but it pans out. The wicked taketh the truth to be hard.
Working with vets suffering from PTSD showed me very clearly that Servicemen who had faith, then went through the trauma and lost it – are truly at great risk. Having faith to begin with helps a great deal. Because there is a huge aspect of Self Worth for the individual soldier and faith helps one feel his self worth. Doesn’t matter what your faith is – You don’t have to be issued a religion. But a Belief is powerful here. I think a great many fall because The Adversary tears a marine’s or soldier’s faith down, then tears down their self worth… then he has them. If they keep the faith, then that armor protects them.
Now the Adversary wants to regulate the Faith out of the Soldiers and Marines. Which is only going to result in more suicides, more pharmaceutical treatments, more mental health cases that cause loss of gun rights and more institutionalization where all of it could have been taken care of with Faith.
That’s just silly. Being a young, Black male makes one more at risk for going to prison. That’s just an assessment of reality. Heck, part of it is because a lot of cops will /target/ young, Black males more than they will other groups – that portion is due to a subset of cops who are racists, and has nothing to do with the targets of their racism.
Having “spiritual faith” does help individuals deal with trauma. That’s not a value judgment against those who don’t, any more than saying, “being over six feet tall helps one play basketball well” is a value judgment against those of us who are not that tall.
Taking certain medicines can help treat PTSD and similar conditions. Some of us would not take those medicines, even if pressed to do so – the strongest medicine I’m willing to take is ibuprofen. But that doesn’t change the fact that they can be helpful to those who choose to take them.
I’m an agnostic, and I don’t find that the least bit offensive. I can deal with trauma without leaning on a deity. Others cannot, and it would be extraordinarily childish of me to demand that someone else do something, just because I can. Just like it would be childish of someone else to demand that I go play basketball against a team of professional players who each probably top me by a solid foot.
And loss of faith is even worse than simply not having it for support. Someone who has relied on that support for years is not in a position to just go “cold turkey” without repercussions. I have a dear friend who’s paralyzed; I’m not going to dump her out of her wheelchair and demand that she walk, just because I can. If this were taking place centuries ago, she would have been crawling on the ground since her injury, and she’d be skilled at doing it. Dumping her out of her chair – taking away the support that she’s grown to rely upon – would be devastating. I’d say that loss of faith is an even greater risk factor.
Freedom of religion is not freedom /from/ religion. Just like free speech demands that you put up with the fact that some folks will say and do things which offend you, freedom of religion demands that you put up with the fact that some religions (or even all religions) might offend you. Popular ideas don’t need protecting.
Well said Flint. I’m a man who believes in God and I appreciate and respect your belief system and freedom to choose a path right for you. Wish all people had your common sense.
Unfortunately, any religious group has some small number of very loud nutjob fundamentalists. Atheism is no exception (“I know that there is no god” is just as much an article of faith as “I know there is a god”). Fundamentalists don’t tend to be tolerant of those who believe other ways.
I recall a t-shirt that said, “Jesus was a cool guy – it’s his followers I can’t stand.” While I don’t agree with the universal sentiment, I can see where the writer was coming from… some of the loudest “Christians” are the least Christ-like in their behavior. There’s always that irate, but very, very loud minority in any religion, who spoil it for the rest. It’s clearly blatantly inappropriate for the Ten Comandments to be displayed on a government building, but there are Christians who will yell about how they are being oppressed, if such a display is removed. And there are atheists who will take a simple and accurate psychological statement and turn it into an assault upon their own beliefs.
The First Amendment requires that the government not make any law which endorses /or/ prohibits the free exercise of religion. Some small number want to ignore the first half, and a different small number want to ignore the second half. The rest of us suffer the debris from the mud they sling back and forth at each other. Less than one percent of the population is having this mud fight, but the rest of us are getting splattered with dirt…
Yes, but it’s human nature for us the majority to listen and cater to and get spun up by this 1%. Like the aristocrats who run our government. They put on this charade every four years, we stop everything for a year while we listen to two actors duke it out, with opposite points of view, thinking that one of them is the savior of all our problems. Meanwhile both Republicans and Democrats get the benefit of a higher state of existence and sense of power that we give them, like serfs. They both work to erase our freedom on a daily basis and both sink us into a bottomless pit of debt.
Yet we actually think we are doing our patriotic duty by voting for one of these puppets. It’s genius, really.
God, Country, Corps. That is all.
S/F
You just went to the top of my blog list, friend.
Well done.
Off Topic: sorry for the highjack, but I’m looking for a picture that I think was posted on this site, but can’t be 100% certain. It was post apocalypse genre, of a father with rifle in hand and son by a tent on a plain, and a zombie or maybe a NSA agent approaching in the distance. Any link or hint would be welcomed.
Cheers and carry on…
Religion most definitely can have an impact on PTSD. Karl Marx said it best when he said that religion was the opium of the people and for millenia, governments have used the opium of religion to justify wars over control of limited natural resources or to maintain troop morale by deluding them into thinking that they were fighting and dying for the glory of some imaginary higher power when in actuality they were fighting and dying to fill the purses of rich old men.
PTSD comes about bc of a person’s perception of loss of control,or bc of unresolved shame/guilt/fear. For instance, the rape victim who was completely helpless during the attack and now doesnt know if it will ever happen again, if there was anything to she could have done prevent it, if she can ever feel safe around a man again. If soldiers can be indoctrinated into thinking that a higher power exists then ptsd is irrelevant, bc he already accepts that he is not in control bc “god has a plan” and “everything happens for a reason”, the guilt/shame associated with the traumatic event can be alleviated by another religious scheme, ie, the belief in a forgiving loving deity. Even the natural fear of death can be overcome with the promise of an eternal life after death,free from suffering.
Is religion a good psychological tool? Most definitely! Religion can be used to justify just about any form of violent/sadistic/depraved act against humans from: burning heretics at the stake, to public human sacrifice, to enslaving whole populations, to the destruction of cities, to the flying of airplanes into buildings. The question is, should the govt come clean about the use of chaplains in uniform? the chaplains are not there to allow soldiers access to their 1st amendment rights, they are there to make military aged men more effective government trained killers ; which is all well and good when the soldier is fighting in a just war, but the way military is designed, soldiers are not free to choose which wars they have a moral obligation to fight and which ones they have a moral obligation to abstain from.I think this loss of freedom to choose may be the most important factor in the cause of PTSD, bc when a man fights a in war that is contrary to his personal, moral or religious beliefs, he puts himself at risk of developing PTSD. How to reduce the risk of PTSD? Ideally, to never go to war, but realistically, a president should NEVER be willing to risk the lives of young men and women if he himself is not willing to risk his own life or the lives of his family.
But if the government is going to insist on countless wars over resources, they to need pick a better opium, bc opium dulls your mind. I think Buddhism would be a better choice. It doesnt pollute your mind with concepts like eternal damnation, or original sin or the need to give money to some person holier than yourself, instead, it focuses on tempering the human mind and body to resisting pain and suffering. Although a peaceful religion, I challenge anyone to think of a more elite warrior than a Shaolin monk. Imagine how much more effective the military would be if they were able to engage in a religion that incorporates military training into their fundamental beliefs.